Happy Sunday!!

I've always had a problem seating small rifle with brass that was crimped. Specifically Lake City.


Brass is sized, cleaned then trimmed and swaged on a Dillon super swage. I try not to over swage which causes problems of its own. See my pict of swaged brass.


My priming system of choice has been the standard unit that comes on the Forester Co-Ax. I've never been happy with the results with this system. There is no adjustment for how deep the primer seats. Flush is about all it can do. Another issue is once about every 5 cases you can feel it hangs-up slightly and then after removing the primed case is sitting a sliver of metal that came off the primer sitting inside the ram.
These little slivers are all over the bench.



Thursday I got the RCBS bench top priming system and am having troubles getting it to work properly. So far I've primed 1000 cases and lost 20 or so primers due to them coming up off center. When a primer comes up off center you can feel it hang up about 50% of the way through the seating process. If I back off now I can't get the case out because it hangs up on the primer. The only thing I can do is finish the stroke crushing the primer. Not an insignificant loss as these are Gold Medal Match primers. Ouch.


The real problem I see with the RCBS is the seating stem is off center with the shell plate. I have three shell plates and found the one with the smallest center hole. It didn't help. I can wiggle the press arm from side to side and eventually get it roughly centered. This helps but doesn't solve the problem completely. Very frustrating.

So I am asking, what am I doing wrong? There has to be a better way.

Be more aggressive with the swagger. It is really hard to over do it with that tool.  You are cutting swaged brass with the primer.

I reload Lake City brass on a Dillon 1050 and most of the swager’s on the market don’t fully remove the crimp from the primer pocket.

I bought  a Hornady small primer pocket reamer tool and put it on a hand drill and did the crimp removal that way. It’s shocking how much more material needs to be removed from the primer pocket but it works well.

This is a common problem but easily solved.

I use the RCBS reamer and have never had a problem with seating a primer.  I think you need to take a bigger hammer to it.

As the others said, your brass appears to still be crimped.  This outcome is what I did not like about the Dillon swager when I had one.  I now ream the primer pockets of all crimped brass.

What the heck is going on with the primers in that photo?  

I've seen residual crimps cause primers to get crushed/schmushed like the one on the middle-right.  What caused those other defects?  Is that missing material from the primer cup or is it debris on the surface or...?

I use a Dillon super swage for Lake City brass. You just need to go a little deeper with the ram.  Once in a blue moon I will get one that fights me putting in a primer. It is real uncommon.

I'm going to set it up for a more aggressive swage.

This isn't going to help the life of the swaged though. I am on my 4th unit. Luckly they have a lifetime replacement. I keep hoping they are going to beef the unit up.

I use a Forster Bonanza to size all 223 but I would never ever ever use it to prime nor the RCBS rock chucker and I would not prime on my Dillon  (Rifle, I do pistol fine)

I use the hand primer (RCBS)
I remove the crimp with a drill mounted on a vise using the Chamfer and Deburring tool (looks like a mini rocket) the center post caught in the drill mouth.
It takes about one second to push the crimp and remove it and as inconsistent as that sounds you will get a feel and 90%+ will be perfect and take less time than any other method.

By using the hand primer I can feel if a case was not decrimped enough and I keep another Chamfer and Deburring tool handy, remove the case, a little more deburring in the primer pocket and fine.
When I have primed 223 of the Dillon while loading I would get 2-3% with the primers upside down as when I would catch a case that was not quite right in would snap causing the primers in the tube to jump and some flip

Yes, I have tried most of the other tools and to me they are not as a consistent as this method so after trying some "better way" I keep coming back to the one that works best for me.
To each his own

That will NEVER do a decent job.  If those are different units, you do not have it set up correctly.  

This is the most extreme example I have seen or experienced of the difficulties of setting up a swager - the brass is highly variable and the swager is fixed.  It under-swages some.  It over-swages others.  As seen above, sometimes the set up is so bad it overloads the swager.

I broke these swaging 7.62 nato brass. Haven't had a problem with 556. I'm not sure what it is about this tool that isn't setup correctly. The only adjustment is the swage rod.


Thanks everyone for the help. I gave the swage rod 1/3 of a turn. Now I can get the Co-Ax to prime more smoothly. I'm going to return the RCBS unit.

What do you all think of this?

Do primers seat smoothly?  If so, you are good.

I can’t imagine what it takes to crack that SS.

The left case looks like it has a brass ring still visible. Check the head of the swage, is it worn out?

Dillon's swage must be adjusted for different brands of brass, you seem to be using Lake City per your pictures.

I adjust the depth by actually making sure the swage head has completely entered into the primer pocket when the handle is fully depressed. The tool should be fully inserted and the shoulder sitting flush with the case head.

Don't run it like a monkey on methamphetamine. Easy does it, making sure everything is aligned and having a feel for any unusual resistance. It's not unusual to have a brass ring form and stay stuck inside the primer pocket, use a pick to pull them out.

You should double check to make sure you have the small primer cup paired with the small primer rod on the RCBS Bench Mounted primer tool. If you have the large primer cup installed on the small primer rod you will get too much slop in the alignment. You will also get more primers popping out when trying to pick up the next one in the cycle.

There is no reason to muscle primer insertion. If it's not going in smoothly, something is wrong. Your damaged swager is most likely causing your inconsistent results. I have swaged well over 20,000 rounds, approximately 50/50 LC M80 brass and 5.56mm. Never broke a thing.

I use a hand reamer chucked in a cordless drill while holding the 5.56 brass in the other hand. I've learned it takes a little "feel" and just a bump or two to remove just the crimp and not distort the pocket itself.


I also use a FA hand primer, which also takes a little "feel" to get a smooth primer seat. Due to the slop between the case head and shell holders they provide, if you insert the case all the way until it stops in the holder, the primer will try to seat off center and either ruin the primer or hang midway. I now hold the case, add pressure to the lever, and help the case center at the same time. Haven't had any problems since.


Well, except for some Hornady .308 Match cases a while back. Unknown to me, there are non-military brass out there that also crimp their primers. I destroyed a few LRP and hard seated about twenty cases with a crimp before realizing it... I put the ones I did manage to seat aside marked as "May or may not fire" due to the extreme stress the primers saw.


edit to add: A big part of the "feel" during hand priming includes slowly rotating the case while adding light pressure to the primer against it. I considered turning more precise shell holders to remove the slop but realized it was probably engineered that way due to primer pockets not all being perfectly centered as well.

I had the same issues Sammy. I gave up on the Super Swage and just bought the Hornady crimp reamers.
Problem solved….

When I setup my swage, I use a primer pocket go/no go gauge.  Mine is from ballistic tools, but I have seen some on Amazon.

Its handy to have around.

Sort your brass and only swage one headstamp at a time. Much more consistant results.

A quick touch on the reamer fixes all of that

Yep. I have accepted that the sizing, trimming, and swaging stages of 223 brass prep aren't going to be fast. I case gauge each piece of brass after the sizing die and then hit each primer pocket with the above tool after swaging.

My vague recollection from when I had and used was the brass thickness varies down at the base of the case.  This variation causes some to be under-swaged and some to be over-swaged.

To break the tools as you have, you "over-swaged" some brass to the point of structural failure of the tool.

When I encountered resistance, I stopped instead of pushing through.  The thing was, I had to stop so often, I gave up using the tool.  I gave it away to someone in my Gun Club.


I now use a reamer to remove crimps - simple, inexpensive, 100% effective on all cases with no set up involved.